The number on the box is not the decision.

Refresh rate sells the monitor. Size against your desk depth is what decides whether you like it in a month.

Size, against how far you sit.

THE DETAIL

A monitor is not big or small in the abstract — it is big or small at the distance your chair actually sits. Too large at close range and your eyes travel to the corners all evening. The panel type is the second decision and it is a straight three-way trade: response, contrast, or price. Nothing on the market gives you all three.

01THE PANELResponse, contrast, or price
02THE SAME, BIGGERMore corner, more eye travel
03THE DISTANCEThe number nobody measures

What we are writing.

5 PIECES · IN THE WORKSHOP

Five pieces on a purchase that gets made on the wrong number more often than any other in this room.

How to choose a monitor size for your desk

Measure the depth first. Everything else follows from that one number.

★☆☆ · 5 MIN

How IPS, VA and OLED actually differ

The three-way trade in plain language, with what each one costs you.

★★☆ · 7 MIN

When a higher refresh rate stops being something you can feel

Where the returns flatten, and what you should buy instead above it.

★★☆ · 6 MIN

How to decide if an ultrawide suits how you play

What it adds, what it breaks, and the games that ignore it.

★★☆ · 6 MIN

How to check a monitor for defects in the first week

Dead pixels, backlight bleed and the return window closing.

★☆☆ · 4 MIN

Two monitors of different sizes side by side on a desk, the size difference obvious.

A screen is only big relative to where you sit.
SLOT 05 · MONITORS & DISPLAYS · THE PANEL

A desk at night: a monitor on an arm, a colour puck on the desk, cables behind.

FROM THE CURATOR

Tape it out first

Before you order, put masking tape on the wall behind the desk in the exact width and height of the screen you are considering, then sit down and look at it. It takes four minutes and it has talked me out of two purchases and into one. A thirty-two inch panel sounds modest right up until it is a rectangle on your wall and you are sixty centimetres from it.

BY POPPY — CLASS: CURATOR · THEPINKPIPER.GG

THE REST OF THIS STATION

TVs for Gaming ACROSS THE ROOM →Settings & Calibration THE TEST PATTERN →

BACK TO MONITORS & DISPLAYS →

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SLOT 05 / 08 · MONITORS & DISPLAYS

Every station in this room has its own chapter. This one is 05. Back to the room to walk to another.